School officials are looking at their budgets after the state approved a $15 minimum wage to be instituted by 2025.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill Tuesday that will gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. With limited resources, school officials are assessing the impact of the new law on their districts and are planning to balance the new costs next year.

For many districts, that means a large increase to their personnel budgets.

For Jacksonville, that could mean just under $500,000 in direct costs to the district by the time the wage is fully instated.

Superintendent Steve Ptacek said, of the district’s current employees, there are 128 full-time employees who would need a wage increase. That figure does not include the district’s substitute positions.

“We are looking at an increase of $440,000 direct costs, that isn’t including IMRF (Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund),” Ptacek said. “Adding that in, we are up to $480,000 additional costs a year in direct costs.”

The direct cost isn’t the only thing that districts have to look at though, Ptacek said, with increases to services and other salaries also impacting the budget.

“That cost doesn’t include those that have been here for years and are making that or just above and feel they should get an increase as well,” Ptacek said.

North Greene Superintendent Mark Scott said he is still looking at the numbers to determine the impact on his district.

In North Greene, Scott said the increase will go to bus drivers, cooks, secretaries and a few other positions.

“This will affect us and our staff,” Scott said. “We’ll have to determine what we’ll be able to afford. We just got back to a good place with the evidence-based funding formula and we could be right back where we started.”

In Waverly, the cost to increase all of its employees below the $15 mark will cost roughly $30,000 a year, said Superintendent Dustin Day.

Day said Waverly has been reducing its costs over the year, so he doesn’t foresee any major damage to the district’s budget for a few years, but he said others could be forced to make cuts.

“We have all the positions we need to serve our students,” Day said. “I can see some other districts reducing staff.”

While districts will have time to plan for the increases over the next few years, Scott said it takes time to find ways to cover the cost without additional revenue.

The minimum wage will increase from $8.25 to $9.25 next year, then to $10 in July 2020. It will then increase $1 each year until 2025.

“We have time to plan, but I don’t think we’ll see the funding keeping up with the increases,” Scott said. “All we can do is run the numbers and deal with what gets handed to us. I think we can limp through a year, but it will definitely affect us.”

Day said Waverly, as well as several other districts, are in tax capped communities and have limited ways to increase funding.

“For districts, there are limited ways to increase revenue and that’s through selling bonds, raising taxes or reducing expenditures,” Day said. “This could very well have a negative impact on many districts.”

Ptacek said the next four years will be an economic planning period for the district. He said he will be examining costs throughout the district in the case the move puts too much strain on the budget.

In addition to the new minimum wage law, Ptacek said school officials are watching other potential blows to district budgets, including a property tax freeze, pension-cost shifts and a $40,000 starting salary for all teachers.

“We are going into a very tenuous financial time,” Ptacek said.

Samamtha McDaniel-Ogletree can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1233, or on Twitter @JCNews_samantha.